Penzler Mysteries, Tolkien Letter, Morecambe's Jokes: Auction Preview
A group of seven notebooks containing Eric Morecambe's manuscript joke ideas, offered as part of his collection at Hansons this week.
Here's what I'll be watching this week:
At New England Book Auctions on Tuesday, January 7, 216 lots of Fine Books & Ephemera.
On Wednesday, January 8, Weiss Auctions holds a Rare Books & Mystery sale, in 398 lots. These will include some materials from Otto Penzler's collection, and most are group lots with fairly low starting bids. A copy of the 1939 signed limited Faber & Faber edition of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is expected to sell for $10,000–15,000, and an inscribed presentation copy of Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa is estimated at $12,000–15,000.
At RR Auction on Wednesday, Fine Autographs and Artifacts, in 864 lots. A copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer is expected to lead the way at $60,000+, while a Karl Marx note on a piece of mail (between two banking firms and somehow misdirected to Marx) is expected to sell for more than $40,000. This sale includes two interesting Tolkien lots: an inscribed copy of The Road Goes Ever On presented by Tolkien to his friend Margaret Wiseman (expected to reach $20,000+) and a 1955 letter to a reader about the delayed publication of The Return of the King (estimated at $15,000+).
PBA Galleries sells 382 lots of Antiquarian & Collectible Books with Fine Press: Selections from the Professor George Starr Collection (with additions) on Thursday, January 9. The 1980 Arion Press edition of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland, introduced and signed by Ray Bradbury, rates the top estimate at $4,000–6,000. Rufus Estes' Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus (1911), the first cookbook by an African-American chef, but missing the frontispiece, is expected to sell for $3,000–5,000.
At Hansons on Friday and Saturday, January 10 and 11, The Eric Morecambe Collection, in 808 lots. The sale includes a lot of art and furniture and other assorted items, as well as some significant manuscript material: a group of seven notebooks containing joke ideas is estimated at £2,000–3,000; a group of letters and postcards between Morecambe and his future wife, Joan Bartlett could sell for £2,000–4,000. Morecambe's Empire Aristocrat typewriter is expected to sell for £800–1,200.
